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Welcome to week 3 of this lovely experiment. I hope it has been enjoyable to watch.

Day 15

Remember day 4 and the day glow look? Well all that hard work is visual for me every Friday night. I do R.I.P.P.E.D. class and then it is date night. It took 13 years before we could afford and coordinate a weekly date. This has been amazing for our marriage and been fun to go from sweaty to this…

Photo credit to Ken.

BONUS PICTURES

Day 16

My family is far from us and Ken’s immediate are in Florida but we have created a family besides. One of our favourite things to do is to take our god son out for dinner. Today his parents and youngest sibling joined us. We are blessed to have so much love around us.

BONUS PICTURE

God Son!

Day 17

I am sure there is some deep metaphor about my life in this one… but really this is just how progress looks in our house. We have been planning shelving for months. Today Ken and the kids took the plunge and while I napped they stripped out our mismatched shelves and Ken got busy. Reorganizing books is educational right? Cuz guess what we are doing tomorrow! Bam! 5 kids, 5 somewhat willing workers.

BONUS PICTURE

Zander says we have too many books it is like a library… LIKE??? I may be a wee bit offended.

Day 18

It may have been overly ambitious, my idea of 5 sets of semi willing hands… but here is my Monday. Surrounded by literature, dust, school items, and whiny children.

Echo had the audacity to suggest we have too many books!!! I call alien abduction cuz… no such thing!

Photo credit to Ken who bravely worked from home today. And only came up to periodically laugh at me.

BONUS PICTURE

Day 19

And honestly… many days of my life are honestly boring… or at least the re telling of it is. And then cutest lunch bag I splashed out $12.00 on appears and becomes the newest yarn project bag cuz TOTORO!!!! So… I admit it… love anime… love yarn… love a deal… love you all!

BONUS PICTURE

I may have bought Echo a “gift” of a small size rake so that she could “play” with the leaves… in a fashion that ends with cranky 13 year olds filling leaf bags… maybe…

Day 20

The honest truth is I am trying to instill healthy patterns in all my children. So when the little kids have choir and confirmation isn’t on yet I drag the twins to the YMCA.

BONUS PICTURE

And this is what they were really doing… trotting along while they game against each other… so we both win? Or did I lose?

Day 21

Sometimes we just… sit. With the weather yo-yoing cold and hot we are really not hugely motivated. But story time is always welcome!

Our youngest is a full on school age kid now! Where has the time gone? Yup, Miss Echo is officially 7 as of Sunday, August 13th. My Friday the 13th baby.

We actually had a rather fun weekend for her. Saturday was a trip to the Science Museum to see the Pixar exhibit (not that she enjoyed that all that much, so many other things to see). We went with our homeschool buds. It was fun. Expensive (the exhibit was an add on, which was annoying since we got memberships to AVOID that), but there was things to see and do that we hadn’t seen or done before.

It was nice to get out and run around and enjoy ourselves before heading back.

Before that we had spent an hour at the YMCA to swim and play.

Saturday NIGHT we had cousin Robbie over. Which is always exciting for the whole family. He is a family favourite after all.

Sunday morning we slept in a little… well some of us did. Before packing up Echo and going to take pictures out by the local library. We were going to do it at the flower beds but people were busy weeding so we improvised.

After pictures it was picking up the much anticipated cake! Then preparing everyone to head out the the birthday girl’s restaurant of choice – a McDonald’s with a play area. This was a total homeschool buds weekend as they joined us too.

Since it was a rainy day we had to table the beach plan and instead head over to our house for cake and presents.

After all that fun it was off to the YMCA for her swim lesson. Add in calls from Grandma and Nana and Baba and I think little miss had an absolute blast.

To top it off – she lost her first tooth!!! It was quite the milestone weekend!!!

As I write that it totally looks like I am saying Lincoln was AT the signing… rather we covered BOTH of these rather interesting topics recently and I figured why not bundle the two together for the blog post?

The 2016/2017 school year has had a focus more towards history and the United States of America. It has been a learning experience for students AND teacher. These two topics were the twins’ choice. We started with the Declaration of Independence. Such an important piece of paper. We used a lot of sheets from Education.com HERE.

I have to share a rather interesting link passed along by a good friend (and fellow twin mom)… this one looks at what happened to the signers of the Declaration of Independence AFTER they signed at USHistory.org. They truly risked life and limb to do so, as they were really committing treason against the crown and King of England. The twins spent quite a bit of time picking out some interesting people to put into our hand out and report folder.

Abraham Lincoln was a huge success. The boys have always had a vague interest in him with his distinctive look and hat that he apparently kept things in. Our final conclusion was that Abraham Lincoln was a great president, one of the best, BUT his life seemed rather miserable. Granted there was a shorter life expectancy and much higher general death rate but… wow… so much sadness, death and difficulty in the life of someone who now is seen as such an inspirational figure.

We ended up choosing a labook set up that was not free, but it was well worth it. We went with a Knowledge Box product you can find for 5.00 (US) HERE. They have a study guide, lapbook and clear instructions.

You can check out my Education.com collection of worksheets HERE. Activity Village has some very helpful worksheets as well (sadly these are all pay for sites to get the full experience, but we have found it well worth it.) HERE. You can do a helpful search on EnchantedLearning as well to get these pages HERE.

These were wonderful topics for us to cover one after the other. We really haven’t spent as much time on US history as we have researching countries from other parts of the world. I can’t say we will stick with these kind of topics, but the more we can cover and find interest in the better. From Lincoln it is a quick jump to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. I will share our resources from these topics to. From slavery to a country declaring independence, to a man realizing that a whole group of people also deserved their independence… then to a man who made sure that it was realized that segregation is wrong and a woman who helped courageously help attain that dream. Not bad for taking topics the kids chose themselves!